Now, here many travelling men, bicyclists even and some who visit for a livelihood, will think I mean the famous River Rother that almost reaches the sea.  The Rother into which the foreigners sailed for so many hundred years, the River of the Marshes, the river on which stands Rye; the easy Rother along whose deep meadows are the sloping kilns, the bright-tilted towns and the steep roads; the red Rother that is fed by streams from the ironstone.  This Rother also all good men know and love, both those that come in for pleasure, strangers of Kent, and those that have a distant birthright in East Sussex, being born beyond Ouse in the Rape of Bramber.

But it is not this Rother that I am telling of, though I would love to tell of it also—­as indeed I would love to tell at length of all the rivers of Sussex—­the Brede, the Ouse, the Adur, the Cuckmere; all the streams that cut the chalk hills.  But for this I have no space and you no patience.  Neither can I tell you of a thousand adventures and wonderful hazards along the hills and valley of this eastern Rother; of how I once through a telescope on Brightling Hill saw the meet at Battle, and of how it looked quite near; of how I leapt the River Rother once, landing on the far side safely (which argues the river narrow or the leap tremendous); of how I poached in the wood of a friend who is still my friend; of how I rode a horse into Robertsbridge; of the inn.  All these things could I tell with growing fervour, and to all these would you listen with an increasing delight.  But I must write of the River Rother under Petworth, the other Rother in the West.  Why?  Because I started out so to do, and no man should let himself be led away by a word, or by any such little thing.

Let me therefore have done with this eastern river, far away from my home, a river at the end of long journeys, and speak of that other noble Rother, the Rother of quiet men, the valley that is like a shrine in England.

Many famous towns and villages stand in the valley of this river and even (some of them) upon its very banks.  Thus there are the three principal towns of this part, Midhurst and Petworth and Pulborough:  but these have been dealt with and written of in so many great books and by such a swarm of new men that I have no business further to describe their merits and antiquity.  But this I will add to all that is known of them.  Midhurst takes its name from standing in the middle, for it is half-way between the open downs and the thick woods on the borders of Surrey.  Petworth has a steeple that slopes to one side; not so much as Chesterfield, but somewhat more than most steeples.  Pulborough stands upon a hill, and is famous for its corn-market, to which people come from far and near, from as far off as Burpham or as close by as Bury.  All these noble towns have (as I said before) been written of in books, only no book that I know puts them all together and calls them “the Valley of the Rother.”  That is the title that such a book should have if it is to treat of the heart of West Sussex, and I make no doubt that such a book would be read lovingly by many men.